This was a bit of a different project for me. A friend of mine got trailer loads of old siding that came off of a mill. He used the best of it to side his firewood shed. I was talking to him about it and found out that the old siding was mahogany. I could not believe that at some point in time people would side something the size of a mill in mahogany. I also could not believe that he used all that mahogany to keep rain off of his firewood...ugh. I took his leftover scraps - about 300 linear feet of broken up 1"x6" tongue and groove mahogany covered on one side in lead paint. Most of he pieces are about 6' long but some of them are up to 18' long.

My first attempt to make something useful out of the scrap was a shaker style end table. Here's a few pix (pix are from my phone, so they are not the best):

Stripping off the lead paint:



Rough wood after being stripped and scraped:



I then ran it through my jointer and then used a jig on my table saw to rip off the broken tongue and grooves. I ended up with 4" wide boards of varying length. I cleaned up about a half dozen boards, each about 5' long.

I have only made a few simple pieces of furniture and this was my first attempt at mortise and tenons:



I tried to lay up some of the boards to get enough thickness for the legs but it looked like crap, so I broke down and bought a 2"x6" slab of mahogany. I cut out the 4 legs and made a nice tapering jig to taper the legs:





The draw is made of poplar, but I forgot to take a picture with the draw open. The table got a coat of teak oil and then 3 coats of poly.

As you can see, it looks pretty cleaned up, but you can tell it is reclaimed wood when you look at the edge of the top and if you look closely at the sides. But that is what it is, a reclaimed wood table. It is not a showroom piece from new wood. At the end of the day I like how it came out. Certainly better than a firewood shed. Ha.




In it's final resting spot in my living room:


I welcome comments, good and bad. It is my first "real" furniture project and working with reclaimed wood certainly added to the challenge for me.

Darren